Mountain View, California — Ever wanted to search not only your E-mail, but your presentations, spreadsheets and documents? One of Google’s great promises is that it would make finding stuff a lot easier, thanks to a Gmail Labs experiment, Gmail users now have the option of searching their Docs and Sites files along with their messages. The internet search engine leader Google on Wednesday expanded the integration between Gmail and Google Apps through the introduction of a new “Apps Search” feature in Gmail.
Google has taken a first, small step by introducing a very very handy tool today, that could have come of use at least a couple of times for many. Google Apps Search is a new Gmail Labs feature that once enabled will let you search through your e-mails, Google Docs and sites for files or snippets of text regardless if they are attached to emails or stored in Google Docs right from the Gmail search box, according to the feature’s description.
So, if you did not remember where you kept your resume copy, do not panic, just search on Gmail and you would know if it is attached to some mail or is saved in Google Docs… that is easy!
New look for Gmail Search. (Credit: Google)
“Where is that presentation? Was it attached to an email? Or in Google Docs? If you are not sure, you may end up searching several places with the same query in order to find it,” Bram Moolenaar, Software Engineer at Gmail, wrote.
“With the new ‘Apps Search’ feature in Gmail, we just made it all a bit effortless. Once it is activated from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, the “Search Mail” button changes to “Search Mail and Docs” instead, and your search results will include matching documents and sites in addition to email messages,” he added.
Now whenever you conduct a search through your Gmail, it will not only display the 20 most recent e-mails with that query, but will also show 20 related Google Docs or Sites as well. These are displayed below the Gmail search results.
In addition to appending a universal search feature to Gmail, Apps Search also offers another feature: “Did you mean?” search suggestions. The feature functions the same way as it does on Google Search when it senses that your queries contain typos, Google will provide a suggestion for the search it believes you meant to perform, just like Google Search does.
Along with the “Search the Web” button that is located just right of the “Search Mail and Docs” button, Gmail is rapidly taking a central position for conducting all of your searches. It is nice to see a Labs feature address this problem.